1 x plaster
1 x piece of cling film (at work)
1 x jar label
6 x little plastic veg stickers (off aubergines and peppers and a cabbage)
I'd already reported the cling film. The plaster was for a blister on my foot from what are the most innocuous looking sandals that are actually lethal. The jar label was from some cheese stuffed peppadew peppers that I was so excited at finding in jars and not needing to buy them in a single use plastic tub, I hadn't realised that the label was single use plastic. Had it been a paper label I could have soaked it off and recycled it of course... The small plastic labels do mean that I didn't have to buy the veg in plastic packaging and so is minimal, but still unnecessary I think. They could be programmed into the supermarket software in the way other price per item fruits are. Unless I shop at a market though I don't see how I can avoid them.
As I'd mentioned in my last post I've just had a few days with my parents. We've had a really lovely time. The day they arrived, I took them over to my lovely Zero shop partly to show them my shop and its wider setting of Merton Abbey Mills and partly because I needed some tea and they sell loose leaf English Breakfast. That evening we went to a local Turkish restaurant, Mezze Mangal which was delicious and whilst I don't know what wrapping they have the food delivered in, there were no sachets or anything like that for us to generate any single use plastic waste.
Thursday we went to Hampton Court Flower Show. It was the most wonderful day. Here are some pictures from the show as an aside...
You may be able to guess that I'm a big alium fan!!
I had taken my water bottle with me along with my Keep Cup and Mum and Dad had their reusable cups with them too. It was great as they had water refill points that meant we didn't need to buy water in bottles and we had our coffee in our cups. I was absolutely horrified by how many take away cups must have been used at the event. It was unbelievable how many we saw. In actual fact, I didn't see one other person drinking coffee out of a reusable cup. Added to that, other than Edinburgh Gin, who were using cardboard shot 'glasses' (which weren't plastic lined - I put my tongue in and it stuck to the inside!) every other stall that was offering tastings were using plastic shot glasses. It meant I didn't taste any of the other drinks. We hadn't taken lunch with us and I expected it to be quite difficult to avoid plastic. As it was, we ended up sharing three mini pork pies which came in paper bags. I'd taken my cutlery with me so we were able to cut them up and not use plastic cutlery.
But of course, a Pimm's was obligatory and whilst I was all ready to ask them to put it in my Keep Cup when Mum decided we might as well get a pitcher!
You put a deposit on it and then get that back when you return it. It meant that all of us could use our coffee cups to drink it out of and as I had taken my stainless steel straws, we still got to feel like we weren't too 'functional' in our treat!
The only other thing we had was an ice cream, in a cone, so no waste there either!
On Friday we went to Kew Gardens (💖) for the day and took a picnic with us. I'd been concerned that to have cucumber I'd need to buy a plastic wrapped one at the supermarket, but Mum had one ready that she'd grown herself and so I avoided unnecessary plastic! We had carrot, cucumber and celery sticks (I'd bought these a couple of weeks ago (yes in plastic) but they were still good and so no food waste, tomatoes and Dad's homegrown radishes. I made spicy turmeric hummus, babganoush and Nigella's bar nuts. I'd also made the bread rolls, cauliflower cake and lemon, almond and blueberry cake and they were out the freezer. The cheese filled peppadews were the only item that generated any waste. We used five paper napkins (one each and an additional two to wipe the plates before they went back in my picnic rucksack). I have had these in my picnic rucksack for a long time; I will be changing to cloth napkins once they've run out. I had also been dreading having a picnic as I was expecting to generate a lot more waste than that. I'd cooked the aubergines for the babaganoush on the Monday when I had the time to do it and then frozen them ready to defrost and add all the other ingredients on the Friday morning. Wasn't sure if that would work, but it did beautifully. The hummus I'd made on Wednesday morning which took no time at all - just put all the ingredients in the food processor, whizzed it up for a minute or so and it was all done!
The Dale Chihuly exhibition is on at the moment, here is a taster of the installations for you...
There has been no other waste generated whilst my parents have been visiting other than peelings etc which will go in the food waste bin.
I'm incredibly organised and so this has helped. I love making my own dips etc. and so that made it easy and it may not be so much if this isn't your thing. What was a real eye-opener to me though was Hampton Court. When you think it followed Glastonbury which had gone plastic free, the RHS really needs to up its game. There are flower shows all around the country throughout the year and if they generate only half of what Hampton Court will have done then that will be a HUGE amount of waste. Other than three paper bags and three cardboard shot 'glasses' the Hodgetts family aren't responsible for any more of it than that.
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